Can Hair Grow Back After Balding Naturally?

We’re often asked – can hair grow back naturally after balding? If you have experienced total hair loss or large areas of baldness, there is little chance that your hair will regrow naturally and without any interventions, such as professional targeted therapies. Even a hair transplant may not be possible if there aren’t enough hair follicles.

Another important point is that if you have suffered from hair loss or baldness, you are far from alone, with as many as 42% of men seeing moderate or extensive hair loss, including 16% of younger men aged from 18 to 29. [1]

There are numerous products, treatments, therapies and solutions marketed as a cure for baldness. Still, we would recommend booking a free consultation with the experienced hair restoration surgeons at KSL Clinic to ensure you choose wisely and avoid investing in hair regrowth solutions that will not be successful.

Causes of Balding and Their Impact on the Available Solutions

We’ve touched on pattern baldness, which is a genetic and hereditary hair loss predisposition and the leading cause of hair loss—although it is far from the only possible reason you have experienced thinning, patches of baldness, or complete hair loss.

Understanding the underlying cause of baldness matters because:

• If there are healthy yet dormant follicles, there is the potential to stimulate them back into growing fresh hair.
• The longer a follicle has been dormant, the less feasible these kinds of treatments may be because inactive follicles shrink over time.
• Once a follicle has lost its ability to produce new hair, it cannot be reactivated, which is why prompt action, ideally before total hair loss, is always preferable.
• Natural regrowth after balding is very unlikely. A dormant follicle will not reactivate spontaneously, which means the hair will not regrow without targeted treatment.

Getting to grips with any other factors, from traction alopecia caused by stress and pressure on your scalp, or skin conditions that are causing irritation may mean we can identify the right ways to resolve those issues first, after which hair restoration approaches are far more likely to achieve your aspirations.

We always recommend that you book a consultation with your nearest KSL Clinic as soon as you begin to have concerns about hair loss. We can recommend interventions to slow down the speed of balding, treatments to preserve your current hair, or customised transplants where this stands a strong chance of success.

Potential Solutions to Help Hair Regrowth Following Balding

Generally speaking, there is no ‘cure’ for baldness, but there are numerous potential routes we can recommend to help slow hair loss or restore your hairline.

Our Director of Surgical Services, Dr Matee, says, ‘We never advocate for one standalone solution since the right treatments or strategies will differ for every client. That will be based on facts and aspects like the availability of healthy donor follicles, the health and condition of your hair and scalp, and the length of time you have experienced baldness.

Investing time and money in any unknown or unproven treatment is inadvisable, since these often lead to disappointment. We suggest scheduling a private, confidential consultation at your convenience to ensure you know precisely what will and won’t deliver the outcomes you’d like to see.’

The best starting point is to evaluate your current level of baldness, look at any potential reasons behind this, aside from androgenetic alopecia, and assess how effectively any treatments or therapies may work to achieve the hair regrowth you want.

From there, we can put together a bespoke treatment programme, potentially starting with therapy to reactivate as many follicles as possible and then progressing to a hair transplant at a point when this has a better chance of success.

Using Medications to Manage Baldness

There are several medications on the market, many of which cannot activate new growth but can prove a helpful tool in managing baldness or slowing down hair loss.

Some are designed to control the production of DHT, a by-product of testosterone in men, which is responsible for healthy hair growth. While these medications aren’t appropriate for women, they can reduce the speed at which baldness progresses or stop additional follicles from shedding.

Others work by relaxing the blood vessels that carry nutrients and vitamins to the scalp and hair. This corrects deficiencies that have contributed to hair loss or reduces blood pressure, which can be linked to some types of stress-related baldness.

• Minoxidil is a topical solution that slows pattern hair loss or helps to boost the speed at which hair naturally grows, with studies that have shown that patches of hair loss are reduced in 62% of patients when applied twice daily after a year. [3]
• Finasteride is another option that is suited only for men and can provide improvements in hair regrowth or tackle the hormonal changes that prompt or contribute to hair loss in men. Similar research has identified a 70% improvement in visible hair loss when Finasteride was used over a 12-month period. [4]

Natural remedies and treatments using ingredients like essential oils, vitamins, and omega-3 fatty acids are also widely available, although the results are limited or vary significantly between individuals.

Likewise, aromatherapy and essential oil-infused products are primarily used to improve the general health of the hair and scalp or to improve the conditions for hair growth rather than as a proactive way to correct balding.

Hair Transplantation to Address Baldness

There are caveats around complete baldness because if there are no accessible donor follicles and a client has no natural growth whatsoever, a hair transplant may not be possible.

However, there remain options, such as using therapies like platelet-rich plasma injections or targeted laser therapy to activate dormant follicles and stimulate new growth. We will evaluate the potential for either therapy to have a good potential for success before making recommendations.

The best plan of action is to speak with an accomplished hair transplant surgeon before hair loss reaches a point at which a transplant is less viable or where the shortage of healthy donor hairs would mean we would not perform a transplant, given the impacts this could have on other areas of currently stable hair growth.

That said, in most cases, where hair loss has developed but has not yet become extensive or has affected specific areas of the scalp more than others, we can recommend a bespoke hair transplant, using precise transplantation of individual follicles to either conceal the area of hair loss, replenish hair density in the desired areas, or generate thickness and a more youthful overall appearance.

If you are experiencing baldness, want to find the best ways to help your hair grow back, or have found that products and solutions that promise to fix balding haven’t worked, you are welcome to contact KSL Clinic to arrange a good time to talk.